“Homework? Liar. Hey, Jillian just got her ears pierced.”

He nodded, his eyes still on his game.

“Doesn’t she look good?” Lindy pinched his arm as if they were friends. “She wasn’t supposed to. Boohoo, huh?”

He tapped on the screen wildly for a few seconds, then looked up, smiling. “I won!”

“See her ears?” Lindy said.

He looked up. “What?”

“My parents are going to kill me,” Jillian said.

“I’ve done things my mom would kill me for, but so far so good,” he said.

“Like what?” Lindy said.

He shrugged. “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, if you know what I mean. They might even help.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Jillian said, but Mark had started a new game.

“I’m bad too,” Lindy said, nodding.

“Yeah?” he said, not looking up.

He liked Lindy. That was obvious. Boys liked girls who were daring and blond. Jillian might as well go now. Lindy had gotten what she wanted from Jillian. She no longer needed her. Jillian took the perfume out of her bag and sniffed it again.

“Can I see it?” Lindy said, putting out her hand. She sprayed perfume on Mark’s arm.

“Hey!” he said.

Lindy sprayed Mark’s neck. He grabbed it and sprayed her throat.

Jillian watched her new perfume evaporate in the air. When had Lindy bought it? she wondered, watching them play.

Lindy’s phone rang. “What, Mom,” she said, her voice suddenly bored and irritated.

Mark gave the perfume back to Jillian. “Sorry.” Their fingers touched in the transaction.

“I don’t mind.” She didn’t. Not the wasting of the perfume. Certainly not the touching of the fingers.

When had Lindy bought it? Not when she bought the sweater. Jillian had been with her. She rolled the bottle back and forth between her palms. It had a pleasing weight to it.

“My mom says to meet her at Starbucks in five,” Lindy said. “You smell good, Mark.”

He sniffed his arm. “I kind of do.”

Lindy grabbed his phone and swiped through his recent calls. “Mom work, Mom cell, school . . . blah, blah. How about your dad? Don’t you have a dad?”

“Lindy!” Jillian cried.

“My mom’s a black widow spider. She ate my dad after he impregnated her,” Mark said.

Lindy laughed and started tapping on his phone.

“Don’t.” He reached for it, but she held it away.

Her phone chirped. “Oh, a text telling me you think I’m hot? How sweet, Mark.”

“When did you even buy this?” Jillian said, holding the perfume aloft.

Lindy rolled her eyes. “We better go. Bye, Marko. In Italy, they’d call you Marko.”

“O solo mio,” he said, returning to his game.

“Well,” Jillian said when she and Lindy were on the escalator. “When did you?”

“What?” Lindy sounded annoyed.

“Buy the perfume.”

“When you were trying on stuff, duh.”

“You were with me.”